Let’s Watch One More by Sharon O’Donnell

My two oldest sons and I LOVE to watch suspenseful TV series. “24” got us started back when they were in high school and middle school, and watching that weekly show together was really good bonding time.  But the best part was catching up if we started a series later than everyone else did. This happened with the first season of 24, and it was great fun watching episode after episode trying to get caught up before season two started. It was addictive watching the exploits of Jack Bauer, and I will never forget how we’d promise that we’d only watch one more episode, and then when that one would end on a cliffhanger, we’d look at each other and say together, “Let’s watch one more.”  It is a wonderful way to relax for me.  “Breaking Bad” was another series we really got into (I’d gotten them into 24 and they got me into Breaking Bad).  Then my oldest and I got hooked by the first season of Homeland.

Now that both of them are in college or grad school, we don’t get the chance to watch much TV together anymore, and my youngest prefers comedies to suspense.  So I decided that perhaps my husband and I should find one that we could watch together. Now, let me be clear here. My husband’s tastes and mine are pretty different. His TV watching normally consists of the Mountain Men reality show, the History Channel, and sometimes a Duck Dynasty episode. He never joined us in watching “24”, and he would make fun of love for the show. Thus, I knew it wouldn’t be easy to find something we might both like.  My middle son suggested “Prison Break”, and it did sound interesting.  The series ran from 2005 to 2009, meaning that there were a lot of episodes to watch and many opportunities to say, “Let’s watch one more!”  So two weeks ago, my husband and I started watching this series together.

While it has been entertaining, the problem here is two-fold:

1. My husband is not one to sit and watch five or six episodes one after another on a rainy Saturday; he gets antsy, while it relaxes me. We did watch four episodes together in one day, which is a record, and if truth be known, the we watched the fourth one just because NetFlix went right into the show before we could stop it and then it was too late, and we were hooked.

2. Our 10-year-old long-haired dachshund is a creature of habit and he runs the household. His bedtime is between 9 and 9:30, and if my husband (his best bud) doesn’t take him up to bed (in our bed) by then, our dog, Fenway, gets impatient. If my husband attempt to ignore Fenway, Fenway will crawl up on the couch and sit right in front of my husband and stare at him intently. It is quite unnerving. If that doesn’t work, Fenway will walk up onto my husband’s chest and begin to bite his eyebrows. Kind of hard to ignore him.  So this has also put a dent in our TV-watching. For an idea of what this is like, here is a photo below. Can you say spoiled?  But we love him. Sometimes my husband takes Fenway upstairs, while I stay downstairs and watch another episode and then I rewatch the same episode again with him later. At this rate, we might get through the five seasons of the show before summer. Unless Fenway becomes a “Prison Break” fan.

Fenway telling my husband it’s time for bed

Tags: dachshunds, dogs, Prison Break, TV